Interview with Sophia Subbayya Vastek

Sophia Subbayya Vastek is a pianist and multidisciplinary artist who has performed in South Africa, Mexico and across the United States. She released three recordings in 2017, including her debut album Histories on Innova Recordings, which features music by Michael Harrison, Donnacha Dennehy and John Cage. She maintains ongoing collaborations with Harrison, composer David Ibbett and with Sam Torres as the electroacoustic duo Tilted Arc. Sophia is a co-founder of Music of Reality, an interdisciplinary event series which celebrates the beauty of the natural and human worlds in collaboration with researchers, scientists and other musicians. In summer 2018, she will co-direct (with Harrison) the two-week long Creative Music Intensive at Arts Letters & Numbers. She received a Bachelor of Music from Indiana University, Bloomington where she studied with Emile Naoumoff, the last pupil of Nadia Boulanger, and a Master of Music from Manhattan School of Music. We asked Sophia about her collaborations and piano work.